Queer and Trans Latinos Reclaim Their History for Hispanic Heritage Month

Sixty eight years before New York City’s Stonewall riots incited America’s gay liberation movement, police in Mexico City made a declaration of their own. On November 17, 1901 they raided a secret gay dance party at a private home and arrested 41 men who they identified as gay, half of whom were reportedly dressed in women’s clothes. To humiliate the partygoers, they paraded the 41 captured people in public, a show of force that helped spark a period of sexual and political repression.

Since then, the number “41” has been used to shame members of the queer and trans communities in Mexico. But a new projected called Honor 41 is trying to change that.

In its second annual video series launched to coincide with Hispanic Heritage Month in the U.S., Honor 41 has released a series of profiles of queer and transgender Latinos who are proud to continue the legacy of those 41 people who were arrested more than a century ago.

In the video below, we meet Camilo Juilián, a transgender immigrant from Mexico who shares his coming-out story. “I know my coming-out story is unique and not representative of all the struggles of our communities, but my hope is to encourage everybody to aspire to a life of authenticity, mutual respect and unity,” Juilián told me by e-mail, “one story at a time.”